Woken Furies

Koi, ex-Black Brigade.

But Sierra Tres had said much the same thing while we hid in the cha

I pushed my thoughts aside, derailed them before they could get where they were going.

“And Sylvie Oshima?” I asked.

“Well.” Another shrug. “As I understand it, she’s been contaminated by something from the Uncleared zones. So allowing we can salvage her from the firefight, we have her cleansed and then hand her back her life. Does that sound reasonable?”

“It sounds untenable.”

I remembered Sylvie talking about the command software aboard Guns for Guevara. No matter how good the housecleaning you buy afterwards, some of that shit stays. Hard-to-kill code remnants, traces. Ghosts of things. If Koi could fight and die for a ghost, who knew what the neoQuellists would make of Sylvie Oshima, even after her headgear was wiped.

“Is it?”

“Come on, Tod. She’s iconic. Whatever is or isn’t inside her, she could be the focus for a whole new neoQuellist wave. The First Families will want her liquidated on principle.”

Murakami gri

“What the First Families want, and what they get from me are going to be two radically different things, Tak.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He slurred it, for mockery. “Because if they don’t cooperate fully, I’ll promise them an Envoy deployment at assault strength.”

“And if they call your bluff?”

“Tak, I’m an Envoy. Brutalising planetary regimes is what we do. They’ll fold like a fucking deck chair, and you know it. They’re going to be so fucking grateful for the escape clause, they’d have their own children queuing up to tongue my arse clean if I asked.”

I looked at him then, and for just a moment it was as if a door had blown open on my Envoy past. He stood there, still gri

That you were whispered of across the Settled Worlds and that even in the corridors of governance on Earth, the power brokers grew quiet at your name. It was a rush that came on like branded-supply tetrameth. Men and women who might wreck or simply remove from the balance sheet a hundred thousand lives with a gesture, those men and women could be taught fear again, and the instrument of that lesson was the Envoy Corps.

Was you.

I forced an answering smile.

“You’re charming, Tod. You haven’t changed at all, have you?”

“Nope.”

And, out of nowhere, the smile stopped being forced. I laughed and it seemed to shake something loose inside me.

“Alright. Talk to me, you bastard. How do we do this?”

He gave me the clownish raised brows again. “I was hoping you’d tell me. You’re the one with the floorplans.”

“Yeah, I meant what’s our assault strength. You’re not pla

Murakami jerked a thumb at the bulk of Impaler.

“Our spiky-minded friends there? I certainly am.”

“Fuck, Tod, they’re a bunch of meth-head kids. The haiduci are going to shred them.”

He gestured dismissively. “Work with the tools to hand, Tak. You know how it is. They’re young and angry and cranked up on meth, just looking for someone to take it out on. They’ll keep Segesvar occupied long enough for us to get in and do the real damage.”

I glanced at my watch. “You pla

“Dawn tomorrow. We’re waiting on Aiura, and according to Tanaseda, she won’t get in until the early hours. Oh yeah.” He tipped his head back and nodded at the sky. “And there’s the weather.”

I followed his gaze. Thick, dark battlements of cloud were piled up overhead, toppling steadily westward across a fragmentary, orange-tinged sky where Hotei’s light still struggled to make itself felt. Daikoku had long ago drowned in a muffled glow on the horizon. And now that I noticed, there was a fresh breeze across the Expanse that carried the unmistakable smell of the sea.

“What about the weather?”

“It’s going to change.” Murakami sniffed. “That storm that was supposed to blow itself out in the southern Nurimono? Didn’t. And now it seems it’s picked up a scoop from some freak north-westerly run-on, and it’s hooking. It’s coming back around.”

Ebisu’s Eavesdrop.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m not sure, Tak. It’s a fucking weather forecast. But even if we don’t catch the full force of it, a bit of hard wind and horizontal rain wouldn’t go amiss, would it? Chaotic systems, just where we need them.”

“That,” I said carefully, “depends very much on how good a pilot your shaky friend Vlad turns out to be. You know what they call a hookback like this down here, don’t you?”

Murakami looked at me blankly.

“No. Rough luck?”

“No, they call it Ebisu’s Eavesdrop. After the fisherman ghost story?”

“Oh, right.”

This far south, Ebisu isn’t himself. In the north and equatorial regions of Harlan’s World, JapAmanglic cultural dominance makes him the folk god of the sea, patron of sailors and, generally speaking, a good-natured deity to have around. Saint Elmo is cheerily co-opted as an analogue or helper god, so as to include and not upset the more Christian-influenced residents. But in Kossuth, where the East European worker heritage that helped build the World is strong, this live and let live approach is not reciprocated. Ebisu emerges as a demonic submarine presence to scare children to bed with, a monster that in legend saints like Elmo must do battle with to protect the faithful.

“You remember how that story ends?” I asked.

“Sure. Ebisu bestows all these fantastic gifts on the fishermen in return for their hospitality, but he forgets his fishing rod, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, uh, he comes back to get it and just as he’s about to knock he hears the fishermen ru

“Right.”

“Yeah, I remember telling this stuff to Suki and Markus, back when they were small.” Murakami gaze grew distant, hazed out on the horizon and the gathering clouds there. “Got to be nearly half a century ago now. You believe that?”

“Finish the story, Tod.”

“Right. Well, uh, let’s see. Ebisu’s pissed off so he stalks in, grabs his rod and as he storms out again, all the gifts he’s given turn to rotting belaweed and dead fish in his wake. He plunges into the sea and the fishermen have crap catches for months afterwards. Moral of the tale—look after your personal hygiene, but even more important, kids, don’t talk about people behind their backs.”

He looked back at me.

“How’d I do?”

“Pretty good for fifty years on. But down here, they tell it a little different. See, Ebisu’s hideously ugly, tentacled and beaked and fanged, he’s a terrifying sight, and the fishermen have a hard time not just ru

“Not a rod, then?”

“No, not scary enough I guess. It’s a massive, barbed trident in this version.”

“You’d think they’d have noticed when he left it behind, wouldn’t you?”